Buried in the British Library's new building at Euston is a small fragile looking manuscript. Protected by glass and low lighting, its meaning is obscured by an ancient language. Yet it is about to become available to scholars around the world in unprecedented detail. It is the only surviving copy of the 11th century Old English epic poem - Beowulf.

The British Library is publishing a double CD-rom containing colour digital images of the manuscript together with related commentaries and transcripts. The poem evokes a dark landscape inhabited by mythical monsters engaged in epic battles.

This edition is aimed at academics familiar with the language. A multimedia version with a translation is planned schools and general readers. Those wanting help with their Old English have a choice between Seamus Heaney's Whitbread prize winning version or net translations including that from the US scholar John Breeden.

This area of medieval scholarship has been illuminated by technology from space exploration. Professor Kevin Kiernan, the editor of the electronic edition, was inspired by work at Nasa to use advanced image enhancement techniques in unraveling some of the mysteries of the manuscript.

Although it survived for centuries, it was damaged in a fire in 1731. Handling by scholars led to further deterioration as the edges crumbled away.

The detective work to reconstruct some of the missing text involved Kiernan studying not only the first complete edition of the poem published in 1845 but also the contributions of other 19th century medieval specialists. Kiernan followed through with an increasing sophisticated series of experiments using digital cameras, ultraviolet fluorescence, and fibre-optic backlighting with staff at the BL led by Andrew Prescott, curator of western manuscripts. Each page was filmed in colour using a digital camera and illuminated by a cold fibre optic light source to minimise damage.

Kiernan decided to use Netscape as the front end of the project because it makes it platform-independent and ready to put out on the net. The Java plug-in has a built in magnification tool, the facility to view pages side by side and a sophisticated search.

When running the disks it is advisable to use a system well above the recommended minimum spec because the large files are unwieldy with slower systems. The only thing missing is a series of links to related sites. Not even the British Library's own site is mentioned.